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Winter has arrived

Hello everybody, Winter will soon be upon us in full force which means scheduled soaring activities are on hold until spring. The field is still open for use by any of us brave enough to challenge the weather. Winter flying is really nice on those sunny, calm days so keep a plane ready as you never know when the weather will cooperate. Scheduled activities will start up again this coming spring.

Announcements

As some of you know we have been exploring new soaring fields. As of this time we have not made any changes to where the Rochester Soaring events will be held. For now we will be holding our events at the field on Marion Road, the one south of the Armory. I am looking forward to a great soaring season.

I want to let everyone know what is going on at the flying field on Marion Rd. Recently the gates to the field have been locked preventing drive in access to the field. I have contacted the Park dept and they have informed me that the locks will be staying on the gates. This is due to people, not us, driving through the area to get back to the McQuillin field parking areas. We can continue to use the field to fly our sailplanes.

So where do we park? Well i spoke with the people at the Armory and they will allow us to unload and load our vehicles from their parking lot. Once we have unloaded the cars we need to move the cars further to the east where the regular parking is. Basically they do not want cars parked on the back of the building.

Hi everyone, last year I talked about holding evening skills building events to go along with our monthly soaring events. The goal of these new events will be to have a time separate from the Saturday events to work on soaring skills. This would be a perfect time to work on hi-start of winch launching skills for those of you wanting to learn how to use them. Landing skills can be worked on, thermal detection can be improved upon, sailplane tuning can be done. These evening events would also be a fantastic time for new soaring pilots to come out and get help with their new sailplanes.

My plan is to focus on a specific soaring skill each evening but you are not obligated to work on only that skill. Feel free to work on whatever skills you want to or simply join us for some peaceful evening soaring. Thermals are weaker in the evenings but so are the winds so this makes for a perfect time to fine tune your sailplane. I have not decided on a particular evening yet but I will be pinning that down soon. I will post the announcement here and I will also be sending out an email announcement for those of not checking the website.